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What Do Property Surveyors Look For?

... Apart from properties lol.

We're re-mortgaging and the lender is sending a surveyor to look over our property. We should be fine as the value has gone up but I wondered if anybody has had experience of surveyors and how in-depth they scrutinise your property?

Depends on if it is a full survey or not - if it is not a full survey then it should just be a cursory look over the general condition of the building, looking for settling/subsidence, cracks in walls, where changes have been made, condition of window frames, guttering, downpipes etc - that sort of thing. Full surveys are the same but with more detail and closer inspections taking more time.

A mortgage report which to be very honest the surveyor doesn't even need to enter your house. This type of survey is all based on the asset that is the house, does the price being paid reflect the worth of the property should you default and the bank takes the house.

Homebuyers report, as above for the bank, but also a little bit of looking under the skin of the house for potential problems. This may included comments such as "roof is original" or "signs of manageable damp", possibly a quick peek at the fuse box as well and pretty much all the things in a house that will surprise you once you've moved in.

Structural survey, the man with a drill come in, measures damp levels in brickwork, takes up carpet to view direction of floorboards and supporting walls with reference to any internal layout changes. May also have a look at the sewerage if it's shared and runs across your property. This is the "daddy" of surveys, looking at all things that to me and you would be "things to get around to doing one day", lining chimneys, improving the energy efficiency rating.

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Does help, thanks DT From what they've said and what you have said it sounds like it's the first option. Even if they do find something erroneous, worst case - it seems from reading up - is they'll recommend remedial works are done within a certain timeframe and I suspect a little damp corner in a garage on an exterior wall is something they come across fairly often. It's not as if the doors won't fit in their frames anymore due to subsidence or anything.

they are useless, they cant even lift up your floorboards...half the problems will be under there. if there is no ladder into the roof half of them dont go up. they might tell you the thickness of your roof insulation though...worth it for the money? :/

they are useless, they cant even lift up your floorboards...half the problems will be under there. if there is no ladder into the roof half of them dont go up. they might tell you the thickness of your roof insulation though...worth it for the money? :/

I'll let you know how good he is, waba. We have to endure this rigmarole as it's a stipulation of the remortgage.

I'm not overly concerned tbh. We're quite lucky in so much as we inherited another property which we sold, and sold our previous house at profit 8 years ago and bought where we are now with only a 40% mortgage against the value of the purchase price of the property (lovely uninterrupted panoramic beach views ) I've done my homework - there is a website where you can see what properties sold for around you in the last few years and from that I can tell they've gone up about £50K. We're doing this as my wife is re-training so is effectively a student which was always the long term plan and we knew we'd lose her income for a few years but we could comfortably release equity from the property - if we bought the right place. Location, location, location as they say

well, good luck with it all the mortgage companies always have it as a stipulation, i find it so funny though as they basically tell the mortgage company "yes, there is a house there". makes me think of solicitor fees...